Q: I work for a great company where we have an experienced group of senior leaders of which I’m a member.
One of our challenges, however, is that the majority of our front line managers are green and inexperienced. They are highly educated, smart and motivated but have little real life work experience. We want to offer some management training to improve their effectiveness but have no idea where to begin or what to include. Any suggestions?
A: The challenge you are describing is actually very common with high-tech start-ups and other innovative companies. These companies usually experience a lot of early success, which propels fast growth and hiring. They then suddenly find themselves with lots of (highly educated) employees, some of whom are promoted to be in charge of teams, even if unprepared to lead. Soon, they start making classic rookie mistakes in hiring and supervising, which (as you have no doubt discovered) can place the company at a disadvantage –or worse.
Providing them proper training is a must. So where to begin?
When I previously faced a similar situation, we designed a 4-hour workshop titled “So, You Are a Supervisor Now”. It was meant to serve a range of purposes: Senior leaders introduced the sessions and “welcomed” newly promoted employees into the management ranks, which was great for morale. The workshop made them aware of their new legal responsibilities as “agents” of the company (specially re: sexual harassment policy). It gave them an overview of the importance of proper hiring, interviewing, effective communication, goal setting, giving performance feedback, and most importantly, to know when they were in over their heads and needed to ask for help.
The workshop was not meant to necessarily train them to be good managers (not enough time), but instead to give them an overview of the importance of the task. By offering the workshop 2 or 3 times a year we provided a common, uniform, minimum body of knowledge. It worked well.
After they’ve completed that, you can then focus your training on specific needs. For example, if you are in high growth mode, it would be useful if your green supervisors learned about effective interviewing techniques so they can improve their hiring choices. Or if you’re trying to become a “high performance” organization, perhaps focus on teaching topics about motivation, delegation, incentives, and managing performance. You get the idea.
So, what I’m recommending is that you regularly offer a half-day or so general foundation about what being a manager entails. And then focus more detailed, longer training, that addresses the specific set of priorities your company is facing. Hope this helps.
©Copyright Eva Del Rio
Eva Del Rio is creator of HR Box™ – tools for small businesses and startups. Send questions to Eva@evadelrio.com
